Traveling the World One Day at a Time

Languages

March 04, 2009

There are few situations in life that require the precise degree of clear communication between two people as the every day haircut. The interaction is brief and rapid. In that time, you must explain what you want and what you don't want, and if you fail to pass along the intended information,
you may well end up far more bald or Farah-Fawcett-layered than you ever hoped to be.

Perhaps that's why I've been putting off visiting a peluqueria here in Salta. Until now.

Delia repeated back to me mostly what I said to her. I nod. She begins. Then I sat back and hoped for the best.

In most conversations, you don't need to understand each word stated. For example, there's a coffee shop Noah and I occasionally frequent. In order to go to the bathroom, you have to get a key from behind the counter, walk out the shop to the left, down stairs and then up another short flight of stairs on the right to find the bathroom.

The last time we were there, I went to ask for the key. The man behind the counter smiled and said something to which I said "Si,"even though I hadn't actually heard what he said. A couple seconds after I responded, I realized his sentence included the word donde -- where. And somewhere else in there was sabes -- "you know", second person informal.

"Do you know where to find the bathroom?"

So much of language is context. I knew what he would ask, because I'd been through this same interaction with him previously. The two words that eventually landed in my brain confirmed my initial assumptions.

All that said, had I been entirely wrong, I would have either lived without whatever information he gave me or I would have returned to ask again. In this case, no harm done. Not so in many other situations, such as "What is your child's blood type?"

It got me wondering. How many words in a sentence do you need to understand? And how much of what we understand and say is based on repetitive patterns?

In Spanish, my vocabulary and thus speech is still limited, so the sorts of conversations I have are also -- while expanding daily --still limited. Thus, I find myself repeating the same things over and over to many people. I can talk rather brilliantly and fluently about how long I've been in Salta, the kind of work I do, just about anything related to Lila and her understanding of Castellano and quite a few other topics. Each time I repeat a conversation, I improve on it, clean up the grammar, tighten the diction.

It makes me realize how often we all tend to repeat the same memes. But when we're entirely fluent in a language, the number of memes and themes are greater, so it is easier to hide how often we're saying exactly the same thing.

This reminds me of some research I did while working for Madeline Gins and Arakawa. It was my first job out of college, and I was charged with, among other things, researching psychology and perception for their book Helen Keller or Arakawa. Most days, I logged into Bobst Library at NYU and began combing through the card catalogue looking for books that would answer the following: On how many visual points does the human eye focus when seeing the visual field? Basically, how much do we really see and how much does the brain fill in? The answer I found through my research wasn't specific, somewhere between 7-20 points, but a consensus is clear. We do not see everything. I extrapolate that research to say that we also do not hear, feel or understand everything around us either.

In some ways, I find this rather depressing, particularly as a writer. Will I never be able to truly communicate the thoughts and ideas I have?

I quickly move past that intial negativity, though, when I start to see the endless possibility of creativity that lies in between the words and images that we understand. This allows us artistic and literary interpretation. It allows for two images of the Mona Lisa to become entirely different works of art depending on if you see her live in all her tiny glory in the Louvre or if you see a photograph of people viewing the Mona Lisa in the Louvre blown up wall size in a gallery in Atlanta. It allows for the enormous lattitude we give to James Joyce. And it gifts us all infinite ways of seeing the world.

So those were my thoughts as I sat in Delia's chair while she snip-snipped all around my head. I'm happy to report that I walked away without bangs or split ends. I also did not end up with anything like what I call "The Duck-Butt Cut" that I received from an overly enthusiastic woman named Leather at a salon in NYC.

January 07, 2009

So Lila was sick for a couple days. Then Noah and I caught whatever she had, so we've all been taking it easy.

All in all, we've spent a lot more time inside lately, which also happens to coincide with some particularly hot weather.

The timing of this has been perfect. While cooped up in the house, we've been planning the next few weeks. We were able to extend our stay in Rony and Michael's apartment for another week. And while I'm happy to be heading to the country soon, I'm also happy to have a bit more time to do things in Buenos Aires. After the 15th, we head to Salta. How we're getting there? We'll either fly or take the bus. What we're doing when we get there? I dont' know yet.

All I know is we go to Salta on either the 14th or 15th. Will spend a few days in Salta. And then will head to the Jujuy province. I've heard it's hotter there, but beautiful. That's what everyone says. "Oh, muy caliente." Then i think they see our faces. "Pero muy hermoso."

What's happening in Jujuy? I'm not really sure.

In the meantime, I've been writing a lot. I've also just started a writer's group with three other people, all other Couchsurfers. Two of us write in English. The other two in Spanish. We meet at a cafe near to hear, one of the few with outdoor seating that's not so close to the road you feel you're drinking your cortado on the West Side Highway. And it's been wonderful to be working and talking with writers again.

December 18, 2008

I thought I understood Spanish when we lived in Panama. Until I crossed the border into Costa Rica when I sat in a guard booth just after crossing into Sixaola chatting with the border patrol while Noah went back into Panama to stamp the passports we forgot to stamp. All of a sudden, not a single thing made sense.

This last time in Panama and Costa Rica, I understood everyone. So again, I thought I understood Spanish.

Until we landed in Buenos Aires.

The pace of the language is different. Here, they use a more elegant Spanish and incorporate far more words than you hear on a daily basis in Panama or Costa Rica.

In Panama, it's Buenos when you want to say hello, morning, noon or night. Buenos Aires, not only do you have to know whether it's morning, noon or night, you have to remember how to conjugate the masculine or feminine forms of the greeting. Dias, masculine Buenos Dias. Afternoon, feminine, Buenas Tardes. Which is all well and good when I can go and look it up in a book or online, but generally, I don't have that kind of time when saying a quick good morning.

But it's really the prononciation that kills me. What really gets me is that "double L." As in villa, zapallito, zapatilla, muelle, orgullo and endless other words I've used in the past and been understood. Stress on in the past.

Villa, easy right? Vee-Ya. That's how I'd say it in just about every other Spanish speaking situation I've encountered. Not so now. Now it's Vee-zha. Zappa-zhito, moo-zhay. And if you don't say it that way, you won't be understood.

As if I would have been understood using the Panamanian version of words. Fresa. Maracuya. Mantequilla. That would be strawberry, peach and butter respectively. But mantequilla would not be pronounced in the Argentinian Man-Teh-Key-zha, because that is not the word for butter here. It's manteca. Fresa becomes fruitilla. Melocoton becomes durazno.

Of course it does. And I've heard tell that things change once again when you leave the city.

I have now truly mastered the Blank Look, No Entiendo method of communication. I'll be teaching lessons in the fall.

And now that I've probably confused all of you as much as I have myself, I'm off to take my first all Spanish yoga class.

December 14, 2008

We're here. Finally, after more than six months of planning, thinking, figuring, we're here.

Yep, We're here. I have to keep telling myself that, because most of the time, I'm not sure where I am.

Our flight here took us through Miama, Panama, Bocas, Costa Rica, Lima and then finally. Here. There were at least three sleepless nights and one-almost missed flight in there, but it was great fun.

Buenos Aires is sort of a bizarro New York. Every new place somehow reminds me of a place I used to go. Or a sort of melange of places. Palermo is like the East and West Villages melded with Park Slope. Recoleta reminds me of parts of downtown Manhattan. Even the smell brings back spring mornings in the city. The odor of concrete, cigarette smoke and exhaust, but here whisps of baking bread and roasting meat creep in as well. No one makes eye contact. The streets are lined with London plane trees. Cabs everywhere, as well as everything you could possible want and need right outside your door.

There's culture shock, for sure, but it's more from spending time in Central America and then coming here to this bustling metropolis. Here, I'm immediately comfortable because it's a city. I know city. Country is far more confusing when you can't just step out your door to find food. Only here, everyone speaks Spanish, the people look a bit different and the empanada's are much better.

I am also painfully jetlagged. Without an alarm, I wake at noon. My entire self feels heavy and I feel like I'm walking through water. Until around 11pm, when I wake up and am ready to go.

Slowly, it's hitting me. We're here. I don't know anyone. I don't know my way around. This place, so familiar in its citi-ness, completely overwhelms me; it is enormous. I haven't felt this way since, well, since I moved to NYC.

April 19, 2008

You have to relax to speak Spanish. Words are lazy. The sharp V sound of todavia is todabia, drawn out and unhurried, even when the speech itself is so fast you can’t believe it'snotjustonelongword.

Still, Spanish flows from my lips easily and people understand me, even if my grammar is horrible, my prononciation off or even if I have the wrong word. Just yesterday, I bought a necklace from Diego, a Colombian man now living in Bocas selling jewelry. We spoke of la gobierna, la vida en Colombia y mi hija. From him, I learned the word desarolla. And for a while, i didn't even realize the entire conversation was in Spanish.

"I usually don't understand Spanish so well," I told him.

"It's not about the words," he replied. "But the sense, the logic. It comes from right here." And he tapped his forehead, right between his eyes.

People look in your eyes, treat you like this is your language as much as theirs and are always patient to stop, repeat a word, perhaps even slow down for a bit, but always returning to the quick beat especially when talking politics, home country, and love.

Words of love are something else. They come with a tone of their own. I can’t quite get my head around what that tone is, but it’s palpable. Even when I don’t understand the words, I know what is being said because of the sudden swaying movement of the language.

French is different. Precise. Clean. Rather unforgiving. Accents don’t vary much from Paris to Provence, although the people down south are more forgiving and speak more slowly and clearly. They’re happy to help you, but there’s always that unspoken patience of a teacher with with a student who seems unable to pick up the lesson. Repeat. Try again. Non. Un autre temp. Repetez après moi s’il vous plait. It is so lovely that you attempt to speak our language. No cynicism there. It’s just a fact.

Spanish: I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been told I speak very well. I know it’s not true. I assume those who lavish this praise upon me know as well. That alone, makes it infinitely easier to learn the language. It can be spoken simply if so desired, and you will be equally understood, but there are such subtle undertones to the language -- things of which I have only begun to become aware -- that lend levels of meaning that can't ever be adequately translated into English.

I taught Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ Chronicle of a Death Foretold. It’s a wonderful book to teach because it is so simple. The story line is straightforward. The language easy. Not a single big word to look up. I thought it would be a good choice to start my Latin American reading in Spanish. But the verbs, ones that I understand, but tend to use only present tense for first and second person, those verbs threw me with their complexity wrapped in such an easy looking package.

In three months of learning Spanish, pretty much beginning with only the most rudimentary understanding of anything, a couple signs I saw on the subway in NY (No se apoye contra la puerta. Piso Mojado.), I find I'm speaking almost as well as French. My French background? Three years in high school. Three in college, where I both read literature, wrote entire papers in that language and then three months speaking almost exclusively in French with people all over the countryside.

Spanish is accessible, open and friendly. French is like ordering a hamburger with ketchup in Paris. You’ll eventually get what you want, but you will receive it with disdain. You need to fit in to the culture, the language, the sense of life that is, without doubt, a wonderfully sensuous, luxurious way of life, and I can understand why the French would not want that marred with American cheese and Ritz crackers.

Even the supermarkets reflect the same. In France, the cheapest, lowest grade chocolate found on grocery aisles excels the best Hershey has to offer. We found five bars of exquisite dark chocolate, fit for gifts, for less than a euro wrapped in rather nondescript packaging. The markets in Panama, reflect the tastes of those who want to buy. M&Ms, saltines and Budweiser. In fact, many assume that as an American, I prefer the American products to that which the average Panamian would buy.

In truth, I prefer Balboa to Bud. I’d rather seek out a fish from the ocean (if you can find someone to get one for you, or procure a boat to fish for yourself) than the frozen shrimp at the Super Gourmet at the very end of main street in Bocas.

Yes, the super gourmet. With its baked beans, bags of pasta, Jif peanut butter (reduced fat variety) ketchup and even, I swear, White Rose chick peas. Do you know White Rose? It’s the bargain brand found while shopping in the US.

I shudder to think of even mentioning these things in the Intermarche, where you’ll find in addition to the prepackaged cheese in cold case near the milk products, a deli with hundreds of gourmet fromage. Ten kinds of goat cheese.

"Vous etes Americains? N'est ce pas?" said the woman behind the counter. "Oui." So she picked a goat cheese she felt would fit my American tongue. It tasted like water. Nothing like excellent strong goat cheese we found in Saint-Remy-en Provence, the kind that tastes like goat and makes your tongue curl. The kind infused with rosemary or lavender and comes from goats that live not too far away from where you buy.

There were six kinds of brie. Camembert. Morbier. Raclete. And so on and so forth. Don’t tell the Cheese Lady, but I made a roux of our leftover cheeses to make, perish the thought, Mac & Cheese for Lila’s dinner.

Fruits and vegetables are also political there. Each one marked with a label telling you from which country the produce originated. We bought French, or in a pinch Italian.

Here, I wonder why star fruit, guayabana, and pineapple are not more plentiful. Isla Carenero, where we live, used to be part of the Bocas Fruit Company banana fields. The road from Almirante to Changuinola is lined with banana plantations, each of the huge bunches wrapped in blue plastic to protect them from weather, insects and banana pilferers. Whatever falls off these bunches in transport is sent straight to the shelves of the chinos in Bocas.

I love it here. I love it there.

I miss tooling through the French countryside soaking in the well-kept manicured beauty. Everywhere you go, no matter how remote – the ruins of an abbey half an hour away from a small town -- you’ll find a place to dine on food unequal to none accented with nothing but the finest wine and coffee.

When we leave here, I will miss the freedom. To say what I want. Walk or swim where I want. Weather sets the only guideline. If it's sunny in the morning, go kayaking then because waiting for the afternoon may well mean kayaking under drizzle or downpour. To quote Marcel, the father of one of Lila's friends from school, "You sit and relax. When you're hungry, pick a banana from the tree. Dinner time, a fish swims by. What's there to worry yourself about."

The only thing that’s not tolerated, complaints. Here, we Americans live a far more luxurious life to many of the locals. We have air conditioning, water tanks, how dare we complain about our living conditions because what does that say about our opinion of theirs?